Osborne had told them that she must be "roused" as much as possible, and they would sit with her and chatter for hours, the old lady taking no inconsiderable share in the conversation. It was astonishing with what unanimity they had hitherto kept off the subject of the marriage, the very topic which one might have imagined would have been the first they would have discussed; but whenever they came near it, whenever they grew "warm," as children say in the old-fashioned game, they seemed by tacit instinct bound to draw away and leave it untouched. At last one day, after the married couple had been a week absent, Mrs. Ashurst said quietly-- "Maude, my dear, weren't you very much astonished when you heard your uncle was going to marry my Marian?" "No, dear Mrs. Ashurst. Though I'm not very old, I've lived too long to be astonished at anything, and certainly that did not surprise me!" "It did me!" said Gertrude, for once venturing on an independent remark. "And why did it surprise you, Gerty?" asked the old lady, already smiling at the quaint reply which she always expected from Gertrude. "Because I didn't think uncle was so silly!" Gertrude blurted out. "At least, I don't mean that exactly; don't misunderstand me, dear Mrs. Ashurst, but I never thought that uncle would marry again at all.--Such an idea never entered our heads, did it, Maude?" But Maude declining to play chorus, Gertrude continued: "And if I had thought of such a thing, I should always have set uncle down as marrying some one more his own age, and--and that kind of thing!" "There is certainly a great disparity of years between them," said Mrs. Ashurst, with a sigh. "I trust that won't work to the disadvantage of my poor dear girl!" "I don't think you need fear that, dear old friend!" said Maude; and then thinking that her tone of voice might have been hard, she laid her hand on the old lady's shoulder, and added, "Miss Ash--I mean Mrs. Creswell, you know, is wise beyond her years! She has already had the management of a large household, which, as I understand, she conducted excellently; and even did she show a few shortcomings, uncle is the last man to notice them!" "Yes, my dear, I know; but I didn't mean that! I was selfishly thinking whether Marian had done rightly in accepting a man so much older than herself. She did it for my sake, poor child--she did it for my sake!" And the old lady burst into tears. "Don't cry, dear!" said Gertrude. "You are not to blame, I'm sure, whatever has happened." "How can you make yourself so perfectly ridiculous, Gertrude?" said strong-minded Maude. "No one is to blame about anything! And, my dear Mrs. Ashurst, I don't think, if I were you, I should look upon your daughter's present proceeding as such an act of self-sacrifice. Depend upon it she is very well pleased at her new dignity and position." Maude knew that the Creswells were only "new people," but she could not sit by and hear them patronised by a schoolmaster's widow.